Released in 2002, this Canadian feature from writer/director Kari Skogland, this film will generally be compared to Colin Farrell’s Phonebooth from the same year. Both have the same basic framework of a sniper hidden from everyone but a trapped, specially chosen target though in Farrell’s film–which I haven’t seen–the shooter had a very different motivation.
Starring Wesley Snipes as the man with the gun and bombs, Linda Fiorentino as his victim, and Oliver Platt as her husband, Liberty Stands Still essentially comes down to an extended conversation between Snipes and Fiorentino. He’s the father of a girl killed by a classmate with a (legally acquired) gun and she’s the vice-president of a family-owned company which manufactured it. Platt is the company president, responsible along with her father (now a US Senator), for all sorts of nefarious dealings. All other roles are played by serviceable, if little known Canadian actors as Vancouver stands in for an anoymous American city
The film plays out in real time as Fiorentina is driving to see her lover in the last performance of a play and a more intimate post-show encounter. She stops in a park across the street from the theater to buy some coke from a hot dog cart vendor and her cell rings when she takes a snort; Snipes is on the other end and a red laser target dot is convincing enough to begin the encounter.
Two key issues for me overall:
- Given the core theme, that a modern urban society is not well-served by maintaining slavish adherence to an unrestrained interpretation of our right to bear arms, I felt that far too little of the conversation actually concerned it. Who cares if the gun company executives bribe politicians, shave corners of the laws or sell to any buyer (domestic or foreign), and why have Fiorentino rationalize her position and then rapidly cave in? The company’s been owned and run by her family since before the Civil War, would she really (without the pressure of being under the gun) agree with Snipes in less than an hour?
- No attempt is made to disguise the Canadian shooting location even though the film revolves around America’s 2nd Amendment and political machinery; the police and television newspeople are completely generic even though placing this in a specific city, such as, say, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, would have made a difference.
Further, there’s too much clutter brought in to make sure the film fills a minimally required 90 minutes. Fussing around the lover’s play, for instance, and chatter among the SWAT team serve no other purpose. Liberty Stands Still almost feels like it was initially written as a two character stage play.
not recommended
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